Capel Sound is a suburb on the

Mornington Peninsula The Mornington Peninsula is a peninsula located in the south of Greater Melbourne, Victoria (state), Victoria, Australia. It is surrounded by Port Phillip to the west, Western Port to the east and Bass Strait to the south, and is connected to ...

Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Queen Victoria (1819–1901), Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India * Victoria (state), a state of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, a provincial capital * Victoria, Seychelles, the capi ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

, south of Melbourne's

central business district A central business district (CBD) is the Commerce, commercial and business center of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides wit ...

, located within the

Shire of Mornington Peninsula The Mornington Peninsula Shire is a local government area in southeastern Metropolitan Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It is located to the south of the Melbourne City Centre. It has an area of 724 square kilometres and in June 2018 it had a ...

local government area A local government area (LGA) is an administrative division of a country that a local government is responsible for. The size of an LGA varies by country but it is generally a subdivision of a federated state, state, province, division (politica ...

. Capel Sound recorded a population of 5,246 at the 2021 census. Capel Sound from above during sunrise

A distinguishing landmark feature of Capel Sound is the Tootgarook Swamp, the largest example left of a shallow freshwater marsh in the Port Phillip bay region. The swamp is also described by

Melbourne Water Melbourne Water is an Australian statutory authority owned by the Victorian State Government, which controls and manages much of the water bodies and supplies in metropolitan Melbourne, the capital of Victoria. Its jurisdiction includes all t ...

as a ground water dependent ecosystem. The 381 hectare swamp is found on the lower section of the

in Victoria, Australia. A large portion of the Tootgarook Swamp is zoned as residential and industrial, with roughly half of the actual swamp inside the green wedge and half within the

urban growth boundary An urban growth boundary (UGB) is a regional boundary, set in an attempt to control urban sprawl by, in its simplest form, mandating that the area inside the boundary be used for urban development and the area outside be preserved in its natural s ...

History

Rosebud West Post Office opened on 12 January 1938 and closed around 1996. The town kept the name of the post office until an effort to change the name began in 2015. Proponents hoped a name change would distance the town from being seen as only an economically disadvantaged suburb of nearby Rosebud. About 56% of residents surveyed voted in favor of the name change. On 15 September 2016, Mornington Peninsula Shire Council officially changed the name from Rosebud West to Capel Sound. The new name was derived from an 1836 survey chart of the area, and was already in use by local businesses such as The Capel Sound Shopping Village.

References

Suburbs of Melbourne Suburbs of the Shire of Mornington Peninsula {{melbourne-geo-stub